Evaluation of Transport–Burnup Coupling Strategy in Double-Heterogeneity Problem

Abstract

The simulation of fuel composition requires coupled calculations of neutron transport and burnup. It is generally assumed that the neutron flux density and cross-sections remain constant within a burnup step. However, when there are strong absorber poisons present, the reaction rates of the absorbers change too rapidly over time, necessitating extremely fine step sizes to ensure computational accuracy, which in turn leads to low computational efficiency. As a type of accident tolerant fuel (ATF), fully ceramic micro-encapsulated (FCM) fuel is a promising new type of nuclear fuel. Accelerated algorithms for burnup calculations of FCM fuel containing gadolinium isotopes have been developed based on the ALPHA code, including the projected predictor–corrector (PPC), the log-linear rate (LLR), and the high-order predictor–corrector (HOPC) methods (including CE/LI, CE/QI, LE/LI, and LE/QI). The performances of different algorithms under the two forms of Gd2O3 existence were analyzed. The numerical results show that the LE/QI method performs the best overall. For Gd2O3 existing in both forms, the LE/QI algorithm can maintain accuracy with a burnup step size of up to 1.0 GWd/tU, keeping the infinite multiplication factor kinf within 100 pcm, and it exhibits high accuracy in simulating the atomic number densities of Gd-155 and Gd-157 throughout the burnup process.

Keywords

• FCM fuel
• Gd₂O₃
• ALPHA
• burnup calculation
• transport–burnup coupling